Unappreciated

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I spend a lot of time trying to make the digital infrastrucure my family uses safe, secure, and – to the extent possible – convenient for them.

And I feel incredibly unappreciated.

For example, I maintain a customized start page that has links to most of the self-hosted services they may want to use. I protect it behind a secured, two-factor login because the links are not for the public.

I send them the link.

Does anybody use it?

No.

I try to help them manage their passwords and 2FA tokens in a password manager that is also self-hosted.

I only get yelled at when they can’t find something.

Never a, “Gee, thanks for doing all this. It must be a lot of work. I appreciate your efforts.”

Not even once.

😢

Compared to what it takes to get this stuff running, learning to use it should be simple. A few minutes of effort every couple of weeks – at most.

But nobody ever even attempts to learn.

Yes, the UI may be a little clunky. But it’s not like I’m asking them to type raw commands into a command prompt or fly a lunar lander or anything.